


the earth is not an echo

by anderfels



Series: what stranger miracles [6]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Animal Death, Anxiety, Archery, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Daydreaming, Developing Relationship, Drinking, Drunkenness, Family, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Fantasizing, Forehead Touching, Gentle Kissing, Humor, Hunters & Hunting, Jokes, Kissing, M/M, One Big Happy Family, Period Typical Attitudes, Praise Kink, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Secret Relationship, Self-Esteem Issues, Sexual Tension, Staring, Talking, Touching, Unresolved Sexual Tension, if u squint, mentioned humiliation, mentioned urination, not graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-26 10:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18281186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anderfels/pseuds/anderfels
Summary: “We should...get out on a real trip soon,” Arthur says, low in his voice, still unsure, hesitant, resting his forehead against Charles’ when he straightens back up. Charles’ eyelashes flicker, thick black like the perfectly painted eyes of ancient Egyptian frescoes, lined with kohl, and such a rich liquid brown beneath, like drops of coffee. “Go wanderin’ for a few days, y’know?”Set somewhere in Chapter 3, Arthur and Charles go on a hunting trip, and Arthur thinks on his developing relationship with Charles while getting summarily roasted by his family back at camp.





	the earth is not an echo

**Author's Note:**

> evening all! so i wanted to post something a little lighthearted and silly, because i'm sure most of you have noticed i'm pretty much following the game's story chronologically in this series, and therefore i reckon some of you might have guessed what mission could be coming up next 💀 it's going to be a rough time, so i just wanted to fit in a slice of happiness before arthur gets himself kidnapped and tortured. as you do. 
> 
> so i hope you enjoy this lil diversion in the meantime, and bear with me while i keep working on the mammoth ball of hurt that is the next fic. it's in the works! let's hold onto this last bastion of positivity in chapter 3 and pretend the story ends here :')

_The difference between sin and goodness is no delusion,_

 _The earth is not an echo, man and his life and all the things of his life_

_are well-consider'd_

 

His first arrow falls low and to the right.

The buck, a brave princeling with his velvet crown, lifts his head, twitches his tail up. A stately young lord, only three branches to his summer antlers, sparse brown flecked through his coat, and dappled with shadow from the canopy. They are down-wind; he licks his nose, and cannot smell their scent, nor see from where the potential threat could come.

He relaxes, and Arthur huffs.

“Your arm is dropping,” Charles murmurs, close enough behind that Arthur feels it on his neck. It’s a crime to speak aloud while hunting, Charles taught him many months ago, and mostly they communicate with nothing more than signals and gesture, but some lessons can’t be taught silently, and Charles admittedly delights in the way Arthur shivers underneath the hum of his low voice.

“Breathe,” he whispers. His cheek touches the skin behind Arthur’s ear, aiming along the same sight line. “Try another.”

Arthur resets his grip, where the juniper bow swells beneath a wrapping of hide. Adjusts his three fingers on the string, sinew sharp and familiar. Nocks a new arrow. He rolls his shoulders, and Charles’ weight presses behind him, a perfect shadow clinging to his back, trailing knees together on the ground, hips as one.

Bringing up the bow, Charles’ hand folds over his on the grip. “Don’t tense,” he says, barely audible. Arthur loosens, lets Charles adjust his thumb position, bracket his left arm with his own. “Strong, but don’t lock the elbow.”

“Who’s pluckin’ this chicken, me or you?”

Charles’ laughter is nothing more than a breath on his neck, and he shifts against Arthur’s spine, pressing his lips for a second to the one slightly more pronounced vertebrae just above his collar, kissing in gentle reassurance. The tension melts from Arthur, and he aims again, left arm rigid as the branches above them.

“Use your back.”

A shivered sigh, Charles snakes one arm around to push against Arthur’s shoulder, encouraging him to draw them together across his back, Arthur able to feel the heat of Charles behind him, touching from head to hips and everywhere in between. “Good,” Charles hisses, and Arthur can’t help the pang of pleasure that hits him, deep in his gut. “Keep your drawing arm up, don’t let it slacken.”

He nudges Arthur’s right elbow as he withdraws his arm, keeping it up. Horizontal, wrist straight. The string is pulled back to his jaw, in line with his eye. His nails are still black, last week’s bruises angry against fingertips white with tension.

“Good,” Charles murmurs again, and Arthur’s eyelashes flutter with the heat on his neck, with Charles’ hips against his ass. No other muscle moves, still, focused on the grazing buck some 100 yards ahead.

The forest is thick around Ringneck Creek. It had made Arthur laugh when he suggested it. A name like ‘ringneck’ seemed quite apt, what with the burning ghost of a noose still wrapped tightly around his neck, blushing angrily beneath his shirt collar. It’s healing. Charles’ ointment has worked wonders, and the bruises have mostly faded, but the skin is still blistered. Sore. Perhaps it was his soft hands applying it, and the kisses he was granted in turn, that made the difference.

A creek winds through the woodland, washing away the silt and mud beneath aged trees, baring tangles of roots like knotted balls of wool. Frogs croak and gurgle along the banks, watching for flies the pitcher plants miss, damselflies flitting above the surface where water boatmen paddle in the shallows amongst the weeds.

They’d set out before dawn. Charles had mapped the forest in a few glances, pointing out the blinds, the well-worn game runs, the salt licks, the natural cover, the leeward shelters where deer might bed down. Only does had been found first, clustered in small groups to graze in the cool morning, and so they’d pressed on in hope of finding a buck. Finally, they’d spotted one, mid-morning, some miles from where they started, and Charles had taken the opportunity to hone Arthur’s tracking skills, his ability with the bow he’d given him. Months ago now. A world away.

“You’re a distraction,” Arthur mumbles, and shifts his weight just slightly, tipping his hips a degree to one side. He brushes against Charles’ groin, and delights in the tiny hitch of breath from next to his ear.

“A good hunter doesn’t think enough to be distracted,” Charles whispers, nudging Arthur’s elbow up again before settling both hands on Arthur’s hips, tilting them back to where they were, straight-on and firm, perpendicular to the grazing buck. “He’s instinctive.”

A long exhale, Arthur is rock against his chest. It’s the most intimate position, and Arthur can’t help but be aware of it, part of him hungry for Charles to take it further. Pull his hips back into him, cover his back, push his thighs apart, take his cock in his hand. Get possessive, bite his neck. Fuck him on the forest floor.

Hell. How is he supposed to _not_ get distracted.

Arthur focuses. Every tendon is taut, every muscle held. Charles’ hands bracket his hips, steady and strong. He doesn’t analyse the aim, just feels as Charles has taught him, knowing the correct trajectory without trying to know.

It didn’t make much sense to him in the beginning, and it still doesn’t now, but Arthur is too engrossed to worry, trained on every sense within him, the burning pressure of Charles’ body behind him, the scent of sap and summer grass, the whisper of the breeze, the whip-sharp bow string tense all the way from his fingers to his shoulder blades. 

“Deliberate fingers,” Charles murmurs. “Hold through the release.”

Arthur breathes. Slow. Watches the sunlight dance with the shadows across the buck’s back. His head lifts, crown held high.

The string is released, and the arrow flies. Thuds into flesh.

With a braying scream, the buck leaps, kicking out his hooves. He bounds through the blanket ferns and disappears over a rise, brambles reaching for him as he passes.

Immediately, both Charles and Arthur are running, crashing through the undergrowth after him. Blood is spotted along the path, bright in the intermittent sun, plants crunched and torn across the hill and down into the following valley.

He has fallen a distance away. They scramble down past the trees, root structures open, like hands with fingertips buried in the soil, grasping at the earth. The floor shifts and tumbles, Arthur skids on his boots, juddering to a panting stop a few yards away.

Jerking in his exhaustion, the buck kicks weakly at the undergrowth a final time, scattering dry leaves and mulch, bleating his death as it settles over him like sleep, a silent cloak he rests beneath on the forest floor. Gentle, they kneel beside him, the only witnesses to his last moment, and Arthur is struck by his beauty, as he so often is, there on the ground as he dies. 

Bitter compassion and an exalted thrill twist in him together, a surge of conflicting emotions he doesn’t have the words to describe, only knowing that he feels weak, and drained, and yet elated too, as if treading the forest trails, breathing the magic air of such a creature, resting his crowned head on his thigh, is to be somehow touched by nature itself, and blessed.

Arthur isn’t sure he believes in a God. But if he did, his faith wouldn’t be one man, alone in the heavens, watching them for lonely eternity. It’d be the hum and pulse in the natural world, the life, the spirit that thrums in all things. A magic he can never explain, and witnesses all around him. In the birds, the animals, the trees, the earth itself. That’s something he could believe in.

The arrow has pierced the stag’s neck, and stuck in the thick muscle of his shoulder where the arrowhead emerges on his opposite side, shaft embedded in his flesh for almost its entire length. He bled little, felt no more pain than adrenaline allowed, and Charles helps Arthur remove the arrow with tender reverence, flesh still warm under their hands, smoothing out the turkey pinions fletched to the shaft.

“You did good,” he says, soft, smile shining when Arthur looks at him.

The gaze only lasts a second.

Arthur crashes forward, meeting Charles’ lips, a tiny noise all Charles can make before he’s responding, kissing Arthur back, letting himself be pushed, leaning back to let Arthur in. Hand in his hair, Arthur straddles Charles’ lap, hips down and pressing forward until they both shudder, Charles’ hands immediately on each hip, smoothing down Arthur’s thighs, across his ass.

Arthur’s panting, hands restless, touching Charles’ neck, his cheeks, his shoulders, groping for his biceps, tangling again in his hair, every movement cascading into the next like he’s trying to speak whole sentences at once. He only slows by inches, Charles settling him down, one palm at the small of his back, the other coming up to his face, stilling his hungry mouth to a more languid rhythm, sharing instead of snatching.

They stay there, just enjoying the kiss, breath slowing, shuddering through noses, Arthur’s arms thrown around Charles’ neck, keeping him close. He settles his weight onto Charles’ thighs, friction almost irresistible.

“Easy, cowboy,” Charles growls, and gently pulls Arthur’s bottom lip with his teeth as he finally breaks the kiss, looking up at the sliver of blue peeking from under his fair eyelashes, the hot flush in his cheeks.

“Mm… Me?” Arthur says, breathless, biting back his smirk as Charles presses kisses to his jaw. “You know…exactly what you was doin’.” The hand on his back slips down to his ass, skimming below his gunbelt to cover the back pockets of his jeans.

“Just making the most of having you to myself. For a few hours.”

Arthur softens his hand in Charles’ hair, gently brushing through the strands. Like liquid through his fingers, ink black and straight as pins; now he’s allowed to touch, Arthur can’t get enough of it.

Kissing down his jaw, Charles nips at the scar on Arthur’s chin, encouraging him to tip his head, let him explore further down his throat. The rope burn is still visible, even in the low light of the forest, and Charles is gentle as he brushes past it, leaving kisses as far as he can reach without pulling at Arthur’s shirt.

“We should...get out on a real trip soon,” Arthur says, low in his voice, still unsure, hesitant, resting his forehead against Charles’ when he straightens back up. Charles’ eyelashes flicker, thick black like the perfectly painted eyes of ancient Egyptian frescoes, lined with kohl, and such a rich liquid brown beneath, like drops of coffee. “Go wanderin’ for a few days, y’know?”

“I’d like that,” Charles says, and Arthur smiles in his small relief, stealing a few more kisses, lazy and comfortable, in the quiet forest and each other’s arms. As if they were always meant to hold each other, and had been doing so for years, rather than just over a week.

With a soft sigh, Arthur sits back, perching on Charles’ thighs. “S’pose we better get back. Meat’ll need cooling.” And he could do with a cold bath in the lake too, never mind the buck.

“So you _were_ listening?” Charles says, and chuckles at the indignant scowl Arthur gives him in return. “Shh, I know you were.”

“You’re a damn tease, Mister Smith. Lucky I like you so much.” 

Charles laughs, vibrant and unashamed, and Arthur kisses him one last time before clambering back to his feet, clumsy as if he’s had several too many drinks. “S’a miracle we shot anythin’ with you...distractin’ me.”

Taking Arthur’s offered hand, Charles stands too, biting back his smirk. “Distracting you?”

“Ain’t no blood goin’ to my brain,” Arthur says, and doesn’t care how crude it is. “Surprised I’m still makin’ some kinda sense. No less than usual, anyway.”

Huffing his laughter, Charles hefts the buck’s body over his shoulder as they walk back through the forest, catching the heated stare Arthur gives him, carrying the carcass like it weighs nothing. If it makes him walk a little taller, chest a little more puffed out, he tries not to make it obvious.

They meet Taima and Magpie at the edge of the woodland exactly where they’d left them, loosely hitched to a gnarled old stump, and fasten the carcass over Taima’s croup, ready for the journey back to Clemens Point.

“Not bad for a morning’s work,” Charles says, as they ride together, back through Scarlett Meadows, ambling through great fields of wildflowers and tangled tickweed, dusty pockmarks in the landscape, barren and parched for lack of rain. Cloudless sky sits hot and heavy above them, stretching out to meet Flat Iron Lake on the far west horizon, sun lazily rippling across the water in a blinding white haze.

“Mhm,” Arthur hums, and picks his hat off his saddle horn, placing it firmly on his head to shield against the unforgiving sun. “I got a good teacher.”

“You’re doing good.”

A soft noise and Arthur huffs, tucking his small swell of pride away beneath the brim of his hat. “You’re just sayin’ that ‘cause you got a couple kisses thrown in for free.”

Charles chuckles, admiring the self-conscious scrunch in Arthur’s nose from beside him, horses in step together. “The kisses are a bonus,” he says, no hint of hesitation or doubt in his voice, as always. “I’d happily spend all day kissing you.”

Arthur makes another snorting noise, glancing over at him. “There you go teasin’ me again.”

“I’m not, you old fool,” Charles says, smiling through the corner of his mouth, cheeks wide. “I would, and you _are_ doing good. You’ve improved so much.”

It’s high praise from such an expert, and Arthur can’t help his giddy smile, shutting his eyes for a second as if unsure whether he’ll wake up on opening them. “One of these days, I’m gonna end up believin’ your flattery,” he says, quiet, and Charles shrugs one shoulder, as if it’s nothing at all to make Arthur feel so positive about life for a while, knowing full well the misery and uncertainty of the world around them. Charles is like a force of nature in that. He makes Arthur smile, when there’s nothing in his life that he should be smiling about.

And he loves hunting with Charles. Knowing he’s not abjectly terrible at it in Charles’ own eyes makes his heart feel like it’s attempting to do acrobatics. As so often happens around him. 

So much that he immediately scrambles to find something ridiculous to talk about, throwing humour at emotions as if it will help him deal with them better. 

They pass the road heading south into Rhodes, looping between dark swathes of marshland, perpetually boggy despite the drought throughout Lemoyne. Crops stretch out from Robard Farm, though there never seems to be anyone tending them, left to run wild with the philodendron bushes, the creeping ivy pulling down the fences and dissolving into sodden red loam, only home to animals and insects.

Skirting around Southfield Flats, Arthur waves his hand at a cloud of tiny flies, listening to the wading birds and waterfowl across the fields, making the most of what little water remains in the marshland. “Oh,” he says, finding his ridiculous conversation topic, and Charles looks over. “Y’know that old drunk I was tellin’ you about in Rhodes?”

“The one who wanted his belongings from that old house?”

“Right, that feller. I went lookin’ for his shit yesterday. Found it an’ all.

Charles is looking at him, listening with his whole expression, raising an eyebrow at Arthur’s shaken head.

“ _Jeremiah Compson_ ,” Arthur says, in the most disdainful tone of voice he can muster, “Was a slave-catcher. A right charmin’ one too.”

“Oh wow.”

“Wanted me to fetch his ‘ledger’, right? And here’s me thinkin’ it’d be some kinda journal or...memories of his kids or somethin’ - kids who all disowned him for bein’ a violent old asshole by the way - but ‘course it wasn’t.”

Arthur shakes his head again, lip curling at the mere memory of the dungeon beneath Compson’s house, the fetid air thick with rot and damp, like a septic wound. There were chains coiled on the floor, black snakes on the stained boards, manacles still coated with ancient blood like rust. “It was...a record of all the slaves he’d hunted down. Their names, their ages. With _prices._ Like… Like they was heads of cattle.”

They share a laden look, Charles’ brow heavy with revulsion. “It was disgusting. And he was proud of it too, braggin’ about it even when he was grovellin’ in the dirt in fronta me. Cursed the world for not respectin’ him no more, for stealin’ his great life away and forgettin’ about fine ‘gentlemen’ like him.”

Compson had barely remembered the fact he’d tasked Arthur with retrieving his beloved possessions, reeking of drink, the firelight reflected off the unwashed expanse of his bald head, marked with liver spots and red patches of rosacea like a particularly ugly trout. He was a pitiful, crooked creature, pale and limpid, as if he’d spent the last thirty years folded in a cupboard and his limbs had bent accordingly, skin shrivelling translucent off his frame without the light.

Arthur hadn’t felt any pity. And still doesn’t, nose wrinkled as he recounts the story, anger still sitting heavy in him like bloat. “I gave him back his shit,” he says, gesturing with one hand on his reins. “And he was still waxing _on_. He took pride in his ‘job’, folks’d ‘pissed on his legacy’, blah blah, on and on.”

Charles makes a noise of disgust, lips tight as he listens.

“So I tell him, some jobs ain’t for savin’. And some legacies are for pissin’ on.”

“Damn right,” Charles says quietly.

“So, I did.”

“...Did?”

“Piss on his legacy.”

Head tilted, Charles is looking at him, clearly trying to work out whether it’s a figurative statement or not. It has to be, surely. Then Arthur’s lips twitch at one corner, stifling a smirk, and Charles knows with a rush of disbelief that it isn’t. “You didn’t.”

“I ain’t bluffing.”

“Oh my God.”

“Needed a piss, so.”

“You just-”

“Took a piss. Right there. Pissed on his fire, his damned fuckin’ ledger.” He snickers, adjusting his hat to better block the sun. “I gotta admit, it was kinda hilarious.”

Charles bursts out laughing, deep in his chest. “Goddamnit, Arthur.”

“Feller was wailin’, cryin’ about the disrespect to his history. ‘I was good at my job’ he was sayin’. Then he tried to shoot me, the bastard, only the gun was older’n him and the powder’d gone bad long ago.”

Still uncaring to hold back his laughter, Charles grins at him, shaking his head. Only Arthur could do something so...Arthur. “You’re surely something, Mister Morgan,” he says, amusement lilting in his voice, melodious and heavy, like silver coins jangling in a bag. 

Arthur chuckles in reply, no hint of embarrassment in his expression. Compson was a foul old goat, and he feels no remorse for humiliating him. He’d been angry enough to do far more than just that. “I was fixin’ to do much worse, I tell ya. He deserved it.”

“Sounds like it,” Charles says. “Bastard.”

“I woulda killed him, but…” Arthur hesitates, unsure exactly why he hadn’t. “Guess it seemed like he was a day from goin’ already, just ain’t had the decency to do it yet. Soaked worse’n Uncle. Fire’d probably set him alight if I hadn’t put it out, thinkin’ about it.”

“Mm,” Charles hums, still chuckling. “Pissing on his ‘legacy’ seems a fitting end to me.”

“Right,” Arthur says, swallowing the small pang of pride he gets when Charles supports his decision, always seeming to effortlessly understand. “May he rot in peace.”

“Amen,” Charles says, and they share a smirk each, riding on through Scarlett Meadows, back towards camp.

It’s nearing noon when they reach Clemens Point, slipping between the trees that protect the clearing and following the track through the woods. Wild turkeys babble in the undergrowth, waddling through the umbrella ferns like overstuffed pillows, startling when the horses brush by and Sadie calls out to them from the guard post, feathers flapping hurriedly to escape.

The camp is quiet with midday heat, lulled to a lazy hum. Bill and Lenny seem to be discussing something with Karen, which Arthur raises an eyebrow at, but otherwise the clearing is gently buzzing with conversation, chores, and hurrying Pearson along to rustle them all some lunch. After the spectacle at Caliga Hall, none of them have ventured that far out into either family’s territory, and Arthur can’t say he’s unhappy about it.

It’s been a week. Something tells him the silence doesn’t bode well, and whatever their next move is, it must be a careful one.

Still, a more pressing something tells him they need to get the meat prepared.

Charles takes the carcass, again hefting it over his shoulder, and only smirking at the way Arthur’s eyes drip down his torso like slow molasses, heading over to the chuckwagon while Arthur untacks the horses. He picks out their hooves, and gives them both a cursory brush to get the worst of the dust out of their coats, knowing they’ll simply roll as soon as they’re able and render it pointless anyway.

They both get mints, and Magpie gets a kiss to her soft nose before they’re turned out to graze, Arthur wiping the sweat from his forehead as he looks for Charles around the chuckwagon.

“You made us a million yet, Morgan?”

John raises a bottle of beer in greeting, sitting with Hosea and Sean around the main campfire, already sounding halfway to drunk. 

“Well,” Arthur says, admiring the buck, hung beside the workbench already, prepared to be butchered. “If this feller’s belly’s fulla diamonds, I sure have, _Marston_.”

“Y’mean Charles has?” Hosea asks, chipper for the fair weather. 

Given Arthur’s seen him all but chasing Sean from camp recently, yelling at him to do some work, and one comment away from drawing his gun on Bill, Arthur’s grateful he doesn’t seem to be in a belligerent mood. Maybe the moonshine did him some good. That or the cribbage.

“I _mean_ , this here’s my kill, so y’all can thank me appropriately for you not goin’ hungry tonight, ya deadbeats. Lazin’ around three sheets to the wind while we go out and work.”

Amused, Hosea just snickers “Makes a change,” under his breath, gesturing for Arthur to sit with them when he’s finished washing his face and hands in the washbasin, having not found Charles. Arthur kicks John’s boot as he steps over him where he’s sprawled on the ground, propped on one elbow, and settles next to Hosea. “Youth of today’s got no work ethic.”

“My ethic’s got shot, chased, shot at some more, conned- All in a couple days. S’takin’ a vacation,” John says, and again Hosea chuckles, rubbing absently at his legs. His own cup of coffee is held in gnarled fingers, disarmingly innocent, Arthur knowing those fingers could divest someone of their pockets in less time than it takes to blink.

“Sounds like a regular Tuesday to me,” Sean quips.

“Y’know,” Hosea says, and clears his throat. “I agree. Done some good work, past few weeks. Maybe we all need a vacation.” He coughs noisily into his sleeve. Campfire smoke always rattles in his lungs.

Arthur hums. “Far away from them old families. ‘Bout as charmin’ as tits on a hog, all of ‘em.”

“You didn’t have to have tea wit’ ‘em,” Sean says, sitting on the floor across the fire, dangling a bottle of beer off his knee. And Arthur has to admit he would have loathed tea at the manor. Whole thing might have ended right there. With a chamber full of bullets splintering the crown moulding.

Sean chirps his amusement. “Next time I see that ol’ crone Braithwaite, she’s gettin’ both barrels up her beak, the hag.” As he speaks, he sticks both fingers up in front of him, and jerks them up an imaginary hooked nose.

Even Hosea snickers, and Arthur can’t help but smile to himself, picking lazily at the scabs on his knuckles. Times like this are what he enjoys. Silly, and somewhere close to the family they’re supposed to be. Whatever that’s meant to look like. How would he know?

“Y’know, I almost like you, kid,” Hosea says, thoughtful, nodding over his coffee cup at Sean. “When you ain’t a lazy good-for-nothin’ loudmouthed sack of shit.”

Arthur barks his laughter, enjoying the sudden slack indignation on Sean’s face, and John’s wheezing chuckling joins it, gesturing with his beer bottle at Arthur. “S’what you used to say ‘bout us, old man.”

“Oh I still do,” Hosea says, sipping his coffee. “Just when you ain’t listenin’.”

The conversation lulls for a little while, the camp milling on around them with the sleepy ease of midday. Cain wanders in to say hello, sniffing for any scraps around the fire, and then is hurriedly shooed away from the buck carcass by Pearson, who’s getting to work stripping the body. 

They did well today. The meat will feed the camp for a good few days at least, and as always, he cherishes every moment he can spend with Charles.

Absently, Arthur looks over at Hosea’s lean-to, where Charles has his bedroll. He can still feel the weight of him behind him as he’d aimed the bow, pressed there from sternum to tailbone and every inch otherwise. Charles’ fingers covering his as he adjusts his grip, or props his elbow slightly higher, encourages him deeper into his thigh muscles, centring his weight, pulling it back to tether in his shoulders. ‘Don’t use your arms, use your back’. 

How he’d gathered his hair over his shoulder, baring his neck as if asking for it to be kissed, snaked his hands around Arthur’s middle, traced the muscles of his chest to encourage them to take the tension, draw breath, hold firm.

Fingers expert on the bow, carved to his hands, built to his weight. He nudges Arthur’s grip again in his memory, lends his own strength to the draw of the string so Arthur can more easily nock the arrow. Everything Charles does is so measured, so dextrous. The bow was made for him by his own work, but it’s as if the tree itself was planted for Charles’ hands. As if the same spirit pulses within the both of them, the juniper wood and his warm flesh, harmony and melody. Watching him is as much a treat as spending time with him. Arthur could watch him peel potatoes and still be transfixed.

“Y’know,” Hosea says, prodding Arthur from wherever his imagination had drifted, stuck as usual in the slope of Charles’ bicep muscles, the tangible memory of how he pulls at Arthur’s bottom lip with his teeth when they kiss. “He’s a fine feller that Mister Smith.”

Arthur flinches, and catches how Hosea’s lips twitch when he whips around to look at him, ears pricked at the sound of Charles’ name. Immediately, he reins his expression into something casual, but not before Hosea’s blue eyes seem to have seen inside his head, and the tips of his ears have started to burn. “Worked some kinda miracle with you, ain’t he? Buck’s still got a head an’ all.”

Arthur knows a blush is coming. His face always betrays him when it comes to Charles. He could describe every tedious detail of Charles peeling aforementioned potatoes and still manage to come across hopelessly lovesick. Coughing, he clears his throat, shrugs one shoulder. “He’s...a good teacher.”

“Aye, and we got him to thank for you still kickin’ it up here with the livin’, o’ course,” Sean says, far too cheerful for Arthur’s liking. His laughter comes apart like a ripped seam, a little at first and then all at once, much bigger than his wiry frame would suggest. “Savin’ your life like you was one o’ them... _damsels_ outta Mary-Beth’s romance books, I heard-”

“You’ll be hearin’ a lot less if you annoy me, boy,” Arthur snaps, scowling beside Hosea, who just laughs, nudging his shoulder affectionately.

“Come now, I seem to recall you lookin’ rather fetching in a corset,” Hosea says, to the immediate hilarity of the others. “If you’re goin’ for the rescued princess look, I mean. You always did have the waist for it.”

Arthur’s ears fully turn pink, but he laughs all the same, shrugging his laughter from the corner of his mouth like it’s a reluctant compliment. Making fun of himself is easy, at least. “Marston’s got legs til next fuckin’ week, why’d he never have to wear no corset?”

Sniggering, Hosea shakes his head. “Wouldn’t work. Be like puttin’ a dress on a raccoon. Not attractive to nobody. Look at him. Not even a four-peckered dog’d make eyes.”

“Hey!” John snaps over the others’ laughter, and then frowns, slowly, like he’s attempting some complex mental arithmetic. “I ain’t even sure if that’s an insult or a compliment.”

“A greased-up raccoon,” Hosea says, one finger aimed at John for punctuation. “At least Arthur washes. Sometimes.”

More laughter, and Arthur takes a second just to treasure the rattling wheeze of Hosea’s chuckling. He hopes he never stops hearing him laugh. The day that stops, they’re in real trouble.

With a sigh, he stretches his legs out in front of him, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face. “You ever gonna get tired of ribbing me, old man?”

“Not til I’m dead,” Hosea says happily, nudging Arthur’s shoulder again, and swirling the dregs of his coffee. “I enjoy picking on children. Keeps me young.”

“Lookin’ at those wrinkles, you coulda fooled me.”

John and Sean laugh again, and Arthur has to duck away snickering as Hosea jokingly clips the back of his head, ruffling his hair. 

He spends a while around the campfire, and almost falls off the log he’s sitting on when Charles wanders into his peripheral vision, finally reappearing. Arthur props his chin in his hand, and watches out of the corner of his eye, following him as he heads to his bedroll. Then, ducking to search through his belongings, Charles locates a clean shirt, and removes the one he’s wearing, Arthur making no attempt not to watch from his place across the camp.

Charles’ back is to them, thick and square, whole body corded and tough like a piece of mooring rope, and Arthur can only imagine what it would feel like to touch. Properly. Not just fleeting brushed hands, the impression of skin from above clothes, unable to find enough privacy as yet to do anything more than flirt with intimacy, skirt around the edges of each other, unable to truly collide.

He wants to touch him. Kiss him. Naked and reverent and minding no time, just mapping the topography of Charles’ skin, his weight, his warmth. Discovering scars he hasn’t been introduced to yet, learning their lines, feeling another man beneath him and knowing he’s allowed to _touch_. To covet. To find him so achingly gorgeous and voice it. Act upon it.

Charles rolls his bare shoulders. He’s a great bear returned from a hunt, black mane sectioned in half and fastened in a tail at his crown, while the rest hangs loose around his collarbones. Would he let Arthur braid it one day? His hand has grasped through it, striving for as much as he can touch in the few kisses they’ve shared in the past week, but he longs just to enjoy it. 

It’s still so new, so small, this thing between them. The elated shock that his desire for Charles isn’t unrequited, despite the fact they haven’t exactly put words to whatever the feelings are, still hasn’t quite worn off - and if Arthur thinks too hard about it he starts to worry, anxiety niggling at him like a splinter under the skin, a thousand pecking fears chipping at his confidence - but he knows how much he _wants_. He doesn’t need any words to tell him what the pull and surge and dizzy need inside him wants.

He’s desperate to know Charles. Just to take his time, and discover him, undress him, take in the new clumsy intimacy and embrace it. He wants, he _wants_ \- To tell Charles how exquisitely beautiful he is, and every inch of him besides. 

And for the moment, he thinks Charles wants that too.

“See something you like?” Charles asks, and again Arthur flinches, looking up at Charles now a foot in front of him, smiling that tiny half-smile. He has his blue dotted tunic on, sleeves rolled above thick forearms, voice so low in his chest that only Arthur can hear the question. All he can do is blink up at him, dazzled like he’s looking directly at the sun.

“Oh,” he says, which isn’t really helpful at all, but Charles still smiles at him like he’s said something intelligent all the same.

“Gentlemen,” he says, and joins them around the fire, planting himself in a chair between Arthur and Sean.

“There he is! Hero of the fuckin’ hour,” Sean says, and raises his bottle in mock toast. “To Mister Smith! For rescuin’ our favourite Englishman wit’ an attitude problem, our dear Arthur-”

“I ain’t Engl-”

“-And that batty ol’ Mister Trelawny too. We was lost without ‘em, we was.”

“For teachin’ this reprobate how to hunt,” Hosea chimes in, chuckling at Arthur’s scowl. “So he don’t have to buy a few steaks from the butcher while no one’s looking and think we ain’t gonna notice.”

“That was _one time_ -”

“And,” John says, voice rough enough to strike a match on, his beer bottle an extension of his hand. “Dunno how much you’re payin’ him to smile once in a while, but s’a nice change from the asshole he usually is. Thanks to you, Charles! No one else’d bother!”

“Keep that up, Marston, next time you end up bein’ a dog’s chew-toy, I ain’t helpin’-”

“Aaand there he goes again.”

Arthur scowls.

With the same understated smile amidst the crowd of laughter, Charles just relaxes deeper into his chair, body creaking from the morning’s hunt. He brushes his hair back over his shoulders, the shortest strands still falling around his face. “Is it a special occasion, or we just ribbing Arthur for fun?”

Gesturing with his bottle, Sean chirrups a laugh. “It’s a Tuesday.”

“Ah.” Charles fishes in his pocket for his cigarettes. “That explains it,” he says, with a raised eyebrow at Arthur, and Arthur can spot the smirk tugging insistently at the corner of his mouth as he lights up.

The cigarette soon becomes two, Arthur taking the second for himself. His throat still feels raw, despite his voice having returned mostly to normal, and he buries his coughs in his sleeve, meeting Charles’ quiet concern with a shrug. It’s just a blank expression to anyone else, but Arthur can see the question in it, more familiar now with the tiny hints of meaning he finds in Charles’ eyebrows, his eyes, his mouth, how they twist and move and ask in silence, needing no words.

John and Sean get steadily more drunk as noon ticks into afternoon, and Hosea recounts some tall tales, until the smoke starts to irritate his lungs again and he fixes himself a drink of water from the canteens set out around the fire. Knee brushing Charles’ next to him, Arthur has to force himself not to get caught up in every small smile Charles lets slip as they listen to the stories, every barely noticeable huff of breath, masking a much deeper amusement he doesn’t yet show to the others.

Arthur’s seen it. Seen him uncaring of who’s watching. Uninhibited and free, emotion soaring like an eagle on the wing.

As it is, he’s grateful enough for the look of mischief in Charles’ eyes, when Arthur catches them, innocently wandering from the afternoon sunshine. Enough to steal all rational thought away from him. Barely remembers what story Hosea was telling, tangled in the promise and thrum in the way Charles glances to meet his gaze every so often. Just a second, but alight like flint sparks.

It’s secret, but not forbidden. Kept hidden in the way of something special, something too important to risk, rather than something to be covered up.

The prospect of a trip away comes back to him, warm and fluttering in his gut. Butterflies doing cartwheels. It sounds perfect. Just the two of them. Enough time to get to know the new bond between them, space to fumble with its weight, to feel its curves and map its contours. Teasing out lines like the details of a sketch, pulling shape from something formless.

Arthur reckons he knows Charles’ face by heart already. Now he wants to know the rest of him with that same familiarity. Know his breath, his heartbeat, the weight of his hand in his own. How he looks in the moments as he wakes up from deep sleep, how he touches when there’s no one but Arthur to witness it. How Charles would look at him then, like he is someone to be desired, to be worshipped and fought for like the most precious, beautiful treasure.

Not just to know that his own longing is something he can comfortably express, but knowing that he is, himself, longed _for_.

On cue, a pang of anxiety chimes amongst the butterflies, a clear bell. It settles inside him, nagging. What if he’s being hasty? Reading into something, improvising his own lines from a very different word sheet? What if Charles doesn’t like what he finds? Will his own inexperience be a problem? What if Charles sees it as something casual, something disposable? What if Charles doesn’t want-

“Hey,” Charles says, quiet enough that only Arthur can hear him. The others are intent on whatever story Hosea’s telling, Javier having joined them around the fire, grateful to share a beer with John and Sean. Arthur hadn’t even noticed him. “You good?” He nudges Arthur’s knee with his own, smiling his ghost of a smile.

“O-Oh,” Arthur says, and wrinkles his nose, one hand rubbing the back of his neck for a moment. “Sure. Just thinkin’.”

Charles tilts his head, the sunlight melting through his hair like butter. “Just-”

“I know, I know,” Arthur says, waving his hand. “Sounds dangerous. ‘Arthur’s havin’ thoughts above his raisin’. Don’t think too hard, you’ll strain a muscle. Leave the thinkin’ to the adults’. And all that.”

Head still tilted, Charles’ eyebrows pull together, crease between them. 

“You...wasn’t gonna say that,” Arthur says hurriedly, blinking at Charles’ expression. He waves his hand again, flapping. “Course you wasn’t. Forget I said nothing, I was just jokin’ around, it’s- Folks usually say that- Uh. Start again. Howdy, I’m Arthur, nice to make your acquaintance.”

The corner of Charles’ lips twitch, softening his concern into something closer to fondness, though his frown remains. Without even a cursory glance to see whether someone could be watching, Charles reaches over, and takes Arthur’s hand in his, squeezing for just a second. 

“Nice to make yours,” he says, gentle, still keeping Arthur’s gaze when he reluctantly lets his hand go. “I wasn’t gonna say that. I was gonna say, just make sure you can find the way out.” He thinks for a second, eyes flicking through the freckles peppering Arthur’s cheeks. “Sometimes it’s hard to get back, when you get lost in your head, just thinking.”

“Like Alice down the rabbit hole,” Arthur says, weak smile on his face. Like watered-down whiskey.

“Right. Just like Alice.”

Arthur blinks. “You… You’ve read it?”

“Sure. A lot of odd words, but I tried.”

“Right. That’s them proper English words. Flowery and...high-falutin’. Nearly as bad as German.”

Charles huffs, tentative amusement, remembering Arthur’s exasperation with the German language with fondness. For a moment he just looks into the fire, serene, Arthur admiring the angles and curves of his profile before he looks back to him, having found the words he wants to say in the low flames. “I meant it. You did good today. Truly,” he says, only genuine honesty in his voice. There’s never anything but, yet Arthur still admires it as if it’s a newly-given gift.

“Nah,” Arthur says, nose scrunched. “I ain’t nothin’ special. In hunting or anythin’ else. You should know that by now-”

“Arthur.” Charles catches his anxious eyes, gentle, like someone folding their hands around a butterfly trapped inside by a screen door, carefully releasing it to the world beyond. “You did good.”

It takes a few moments, but Arthur sighs, seeming to shrug whatever he’s feeling off like a coat. “Thanks,” he says, round cheeks giving away the smile he tries to stifle, looking down at the grassy ground. “I appreciate it, really, I ain’t- So good at compliments, but it...means a lot. From you, ‘specially- Thank you. Uh…” He scuffs his boot, scattering a small cloud of dust, as if a new conversation topic will present itself from underneath his toes. “You...got guard duty today?”

Charles hums, still watching him, eyes seeming to stroke each and every facial feature. “Not ‘til later.”

Hosea says something, and the other three roar with laughter, John nearly toppling sideways into Javier’s lap. It’s only just past noon, and they’re already drunker than Uncle. Although, Arthur reckons a sore head is much better than one with a bullet through it. Perhaps John was right. They do need some sort of vacation. Not every day has to be spent working his fingers to the bone, he supposes, despite what Dutch would say.

“Have lunch with me,” Charles says, plucking Arthur’s attention back to him, like a guitar string beneath a finger. Head still slightly tilted, he watches Arthur, sincere as plain linen. “You can tell me about that ‘zebra’ you found the other day.”

Huffing, Arthur chuckles, looking for a moment at where their knees touch. Innocent enough to any observer, but a small marvel to him. Finally, he looks up at Charles. “Some zebra. I found Mister Margaret’s darkest Peruvian lion too, and his tiger an’ all - from the wilds of...I don’t know, Albuquerque.”

“A _‘lion’_ , or a lion?”

“Uh…” 

Arthur frowns, and can’t help but smile again at the same time, a baffled sort of confusion on his face. He plants his hands on his knees, and stands, joints clicking. “It’s uh… A long story.”

Now thoroughly interested, Charles gets up, following behind him as he heads to the chuckwagon. “You sure meet some strange people.”

“It’s my natural charm and magnetism,” Arthur says, and smiles at Charles’ rumbling laughter. “Wranglin’ zebras, pissing on legacies. Providin’ the ass end of every joke. I’m a catch, Mister Smith.”

“I know,” Charles says, and just smirks when Arthur stops walking to raise an eyebrow at him, touching his hand to Arthur’s shoulder as he brushes past. “C’mon. Lunch date.”

Quiet, Arthur huffs to himself, and his smile rises without permission from his brain, unable to help itself as he watches Charles look for food around the chuckwagon, butterflies in his stomach doing entire gymnastic floor routines. “Lunch date,” he says, and joins him.

 

**Author's Note:**

> p.s. i maintain arthur has a very beaten up copy of alice's adventures in wonderland in the bottom of his clothes chest, and that he has been subjected to a corset on at least one occasion by hosea playing dress-up :>
> 
> An aside: I read a lot of this book - ['Hunting with the Bow and Arrow' by Saxton Pope, 1923](https://www.archerylibrary.com/books/pope/hunting-with-bow-and-arrow/), preserved online by the wonderful [Project Gutenberg](http://www.gutenberg.org/) \- while researching some of this fic, so I thought I'd link it here for reference, in case anyone's interested in late 19th/early 20th century archery and perhaps a small glimpse into the story of 'Ishi', the 'last Yana Indian'.  
> His story is just one of millions similarly marked by exploitation, genocide, abuse, and dehumanisation at the hands of white people, and this book does only mention him in relation to the white author, but it was a chance for me to go forward to start my own research into his life, which I found very poignant, deeply upsetting, and an important, stark, intimate reminder of the horrors committed against Native Americans, throughout history, during the time of Red Dead Redemption 2, and today.  
> So, if you're interested!


End file.
